“Of course they will. My men are loyal.”
“It would be a pity to test that loyalty and come up short. Wouldn’t it be easier to simply help with my evacuation?”
Bermond’s glare was furious, but Kelsea was pleased to see that it was also weakening, and for the first time since the meeting had begun, she felt her anger beginning to recede a bit.
“The camp’s one thing, Majesty, but what will you do when the Mort come? This city is crowded as it is. There certainly isn’t room for half a million extra people.”
Kelsea wished she had a ready answer, but this problem had no easy solution. New London was already overpopulated, creating issues with plumbing and sanitation. Historically, when disease had broken out in the more crowded sections of the city, it was almost impossible to control. Double the population, and these problems would multiply exponentially. Kelsea planned to open the Keep to families, but even with its great size, the Keep would only absorb perhaps a quarter of the influx. Where would she put the rest?
“New London is not your concern, General. Lazarus and Arliss are in charge of preparing for siege. You worry about the rest of the kingdom.”
“I do worry, Majesty. You’ve opened Pandora’s box.”
Kelsea did not allow her expression to change, but the satisfaction on Bermond’s face told her that he knew he had struck his mark. Kelsea had opened the door to chaos, and while she told herself there had been no alternative, her nights were tormented by the certainty that there had been another option, some path that could have stopped the shipment while avoiding the bloodshed to follow, and if Kelsea had only been a bit more clever, she could have found it. She drew a slow breath. “Regardless of blame, General, done is done. Your job is to help me minimize the damage.”
“Like trying to dam up God’s Ocean, eh, Majesty?”
“Just like that, General.” She grinned at him, a grin so ferocious that Bermond recoiled against his chair. “The first wave of refugees will reach the Almont proper tomorrow. Give them some guards, and then begin moving the rest. I want those villages cleared out.”
“And what happens if my army is as weak as you seem to think, Majesty? The Mort will make straight for New London, just as they did in your mother’s time. Mort soldiers get a salary, but it’s a pittance; they build their wealth on plunder, and the good plunder is right here. If I can’t keep them from crossing the border, do you really think you can keep them from sacking the city?”
Something was wrong with Kelsea’s eyes. A thick cloud seemed to obscure her vision, light at the corners and heavy in the center. Was it her sapphires? No, they had been quiet for weeks, and now they hung dark and still against her chest. Kelsea blinked rapidly, trying to clear her head; it wouldn’t do to show weakness in front of Bermond now.
“I’m hoping for help,” she told him. “I have opened negotiations with the Cadarese.”
“And what good will that do?”
“Perhaps the King will lend us some of his troops.”
“Fool’s hope, Lady. The Cadarese are isolationists, always have been.”
“Yes, but I’m exploring all options.”
“Lady?” Pen asked quietly. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” Kelsea muttered, but now spots were dancing across her field of vision. She was going to be ill, she realized, and she could not do that in front of Bermond. She stood up, grabbing at the table for balance.
“Lady?”
“I’m fine,” she repeated, shaking her head, trying to clear it.
“What’s wrong with her?” Bermond asked, but his voice was already growing faint. The world suddenly smelled like rain. Kelsea clenched the table and felt the slickness of polished wood slipping beneath her fingers.
“Grab her, man!” Mace barked. “She’ll fall!”
She felt Pen’s arm around her waist, but his touch was unwelcome, and she shook him off. Her vision blurred entirely and she glimpsed unfamiliar surroundings: a small compartment and a grey, threatening sky. Panicked, she closed her eyes tightly and then opened them again, looking for her audience chamber, her guards, anything that was known. But she saw none of them. Mace, Pen, Bermond … they were all gone.
C
HAPTER
2
L
ILY
“It is merely crossing,” said Mr. Micawber, trifling with his eye-glass, “merely crossing. The distance is quite imaginary.”
—David Copperfield, CHARLES DICKENS (pre-Crossing Angl.)
HER EYES OPENED on a deep grey world, storm clouds promising certain rain. In the distance, through the windshield, she could see a bleak sky dominated by a line of dark grey silhouettes.
Manhattan.
The car hit a bump crossing the bridge, and Lily looked out the window, annoyed. Greg was in charge of their household finances, but Lily had overheard him telling Jim Henderson that he paid a good chunk of money to the utilities every month to use the bridge. In return, they were supposed to maintain the paving. But they never did as good a job as they should have, and lately Lily had noticed bumps and potholes that took longer and longer to repair. Still, the trip beat taking the public bridge; their Lexus was begging to be carjacked on a public roadway. Security regularly patrolled this bridge and its connecting roads, and officers would appear in moments if Jonathan pressed the panic button. A few potholes were a small price to pay for safety.
The bridge ended, and Lily looked eagerly out the window as the high walls tapered down to a low barrier. She came into the city less and less often, and it seemed like things were worse every time, but she still liked to visit. Her own house in New Canaan was beautiful, a stately colonial with white columns, just like those of all of her friends. But even an entire town could get old when everything was the same. Lily dressed more carefully for her rare trips outside the wall than she did for her own dinner parties; dangerous or not, this excursion always seemed like an event.
Looking over the edge of the roadside barrier, she glimpsed the slums, hung with garbage bags to create shelter from the coming rain. Shapeless, shiftless people huddled against walls and beneath overhangs. The first time Greg had brought Lily to New York, just after they married, most of the buildings had already been empty, the windows covered with For Lease signs. By now squatters had torn down even the signs, and so many buildings had been abandoned that Security hardly bothered with the downtown at all. The blank windows made these buildings look empty, but they weren’t; Lily shrank from imagining what went on inside. Drugs, crime, prostitution … and she’d even read online that people caught sleeping unawares were often killed for their organs. There were no rules outside the wall. Nothing was safe.
Greg said that the people outside the barriers were lazy, but Lily had never thought of them that way. They were simply unlucky; their parents hadn’t been wealthy, like hers and Greg’s. Greg hadn’t been so rigid when he was at Princeton; sometimes, on weekends, he would even work with the homeless. That was how they’d met, both of them volunteering in Trenton at the last homeless shelter left in New Jersey, though more and more, these days, Lily wondered whether Greg had done it for his résumé; he had gone on to a government internship the next summer. Lily went to Swarthmore, studying English because it was the only thing she liked. The books were all purged by then, free of sex and profanity and anything else the Frewell administration had found un-American, but Lily could still enjoy them, could still dig deep beneath the sterilized surface to find a good story. She loved being in school, and the thought of the future made her feel panicky and out of control. Greg was the ambitious one, the one who’d worked summers in Washington, who traveled to New York on countless weekends to network with his parents’ friends. Lily had liked that, liked that Greg seemed to have such a handle on where his life was going. When he landed a good job, assisting the liaison for a defense contractor, and asked Lily to marry him after graduation, it had seemed like nothing short of a godsend. She wouldn’t have to work; her entire job would be keeping the house and making nice with other people like herself. And of course, taking care of the children, when the children came. None of it seemed like real work. Lily would have plenty of time to shop, to read, to think. The car hit another bump, jarring her against the seat, and Lily felt something almost like a smile stretch across her lips. She had hit the jackpot, all right.