“No.”
“Then why?”
“What is the point of this little expedition, Lady? To whip yourself with your mother?”
“Ah, hell, Lazarus,” Kelsea replied wearily. “If you’re not going to talk to me, then go back upstairs.”
“I can’t leave you down here.”
“Of course you can. As you pointed out yourself, no one here can harm me.”
“Your mother thought the same thing.”
“Queen Elyssa! Nothing but trash in the finest silk. Look at her!”
“Call her all the names you like, Lady. She still won’t be the villain you wish her to be.”
Kelsea whirled to stare at him. “Are you my father, Lazarus?”
Mace’s mouth twisted. “No, Lady. I wish I was. I wanted to be. But I am not.”
“Then who is?”
“Has it ever occurred to you that you might not want to know?”
No, that had not occurred. For a moment, Kelsea pondered the worst people it could be: Arlen Thorne? The Holy Father? Her uncle? Anything seemed possible. And did blood really matter so much? She had never cared about her father’s identity; her mother was the important one, the one who had wrecked a kingdom. Kelsea stopped pacing, looked up, and found the portrait of the Beautiful Queen staring down at her. The favored child sat on her lap, smiling brightly, no dark corners, and behind the Beautiful Queen’s skirts was the other, the dark child, the bastard, not loved and not special. Parentage did matter, Kelsea realized, even if it shouldn’t. Pain stabbed into her vitals and she cried out, doubling over. It felt as though someone had kicked her right in the guts.
“Lady?”
Another blow, and now Kelsea shrieked, cradling her stomach. Mace reached her in two steps, but he could do nothing.
“Lady, what is it? Are you ill? Injured?”
“No. Not me.” For Kelsea suddenly knew: somewhere, centuries away, Lily was paying the price for her silence. Lily needed her now, but Kelsea shied away, cowering inside her own mind. She wasn’t sure she could face Lily’s punishment. She didn’t know how she would come out of this thing on the other side. Would she have to feel Lily die? Would she die herself?
“Lazarus.” She looked up at Mace, seeing both sides balanced in equal measure: the angry boy who had emerged from the unimaginable hell beneath the Gut, and the man who had given his life in service to two queens. “If something happens to me—”
“Like what?”
“If something happens,” she overrode him, “you will do several things. For me.”
She paused, gasping. Bright, searing pain scorched her palm and Kelsea screamed, clenching her hand into a fist and pounding it against her leg. Mace moved toward her and she held up her other hand to halt him, gritting her teeth, fighting through it, blind with tears.
“What’s doing this to you, Lady? Your sapphires?”
“It doesn’t matter. If something happens to me, Lazarus, I trust you to look after these people and keep them safe. They fear you. Hell, they fear you more than they fear me.”
“Not anymore, Lady.”
Kelsea ignored his comment. The pain in her palm had lost its sharp edge now, but it still throbbed hotly in time with her pulse. Kelsea closed her eyes and saw a small metal rectangle gleaming in the bright white light, recognizable only through Lily’s memories: a cigarette lighter. Someone had held Lily’s hand to the flame.
Not someone, Kelsea thought. The accountant. A man of whom Arlen Thorne would have thoroughly approved. And Kelsea wondered suddenly whether humanity ever actually changed. Did people grow and learn at all as the centuries passed? Or was humanity merely like the tide, enlightenment advancing and then retreating as circumstances shifted? The most defining characteristic of the species might be lapse.
“What else, Lady?”
She straightened and unclenched her fist, ignoring the mouth of seared flesh that seemed to open up in her palm. “If he’s still alive, you will find Father Tyler and keep him safe from the Arvath.”
“Done.”
“Last, you will do me a favor.”
“What’s that, Lady?”
“Clean out and seal off the Creche.”
Mace’s eyes narrowed. “Why, Lady?”
“This is my kingdom, Lazarus. I will have no dark subbasements here.” Through Lily’s eyes, Kelsea saw the warren of fluorescent hallways inside the Security compound, the endless doors, each of them hiding agony. Her palm throbbed. “No secret places where awful things go on, things that no one wants to acknowledge in the light of day. It’s too high a price, even for freedom. Clean it out.”
Mace’s face twisted. For once, Kelsea read his thoughts easily: what she was asking would be terrible for him, and he didn’t think she knew. She put a hand on his wrist, clutching the leather band that held several small knives. “What’s your name?”
“Lazarus.”
“No. Not the name they gave you in the ring. Your real name.”
He stared at her, stricken. “Who—”
“What’s your name?”
Mace blinked, and Kelsea thought she saw a bright sparkle in his eyes, but a moment later it was gone. “My first name is Christian. I don’t know my surname. I was born in the Gut, to no parents at all.”
“Fairy-born. So the rumors are true.”
“I will not discuss that phase of my life, Lady, not even with you.”
“Fair enough. But you will clean the place out.” The room wavered before Kelsea’s eyes, torchlight becoming electric for a moment before fading back. She wanted to see … she didn’t want to see … she heard Lily screaming. Kelsea clenched her fists, willing the past away.
“You talk like one condemned, Lady. What do you mean to do?”
“We’re all condemned, Lazarus.” Kelsea’s head jolted as a blow landed across her face. Lily was beginning to lose hope; Kelsea could feel despondency creeping in, a deadened numbness that echoed all through her mind. “You might need to take me back up, Lazarus. I don’t have long.”
“We can go back through the tunnels.” Mace played with the wall for a moment, opening one of his many doors. “Where do you go in your fugues, Lady?”
“Backward. Before the Crossing.”
“Backward in time?”
“Yes.”
“Do you see him? William Tear?”
“Sometimes.” On her way through the door, Kelsea reached up to touch her mother’s canvas, the painted hem of her green dress, feeling rogue regret surface in her mind. No matter how hard she tried to hate the smiling woman in the portrait, she would have liked the chance to speak to her, at least once. “You knew my mother well, Lazarus. What would she have thought of me?”
“She would have found you too serious, Lady. Elyssa wasn’t one to feel anguish on behalf of others, let alone of circumstances that couldn’t be changed. She surrounded herself with similar people.”
“Was my father a good man?”
A pained expression darted across Mace’s face, then was gone, so quickly that Kelsea might have imagined it. But she knew she had not. “Yes, Lady. A very good man.” He gestured into the darkness. “Come, or I’ll end up carrying you. You’ve got that look about you.”
“What look?”
“Like a drunk about to pass out.”
With a last glance at her mother’s portrait, Kelsea followed him into the tunnel. Through the walls, she could hear the murmur of many voices, even in the middle of the night, people too worried to sleep. They were all in equal danger now; lowborn or highborn, the army outside the wall would not make distinctions. Kelsea tried to picture the coming dawn, but could get no further than the end of the New London Bridge. Something was blocking her vision. Burning fire spread through Kelsea’s arms, a tingling pain that moved on to her chest before attacking her legs. The pain intensified, and Kelsea halted in the darkness, unable to move. She had never felt anything like this; each nerve in her body seemed to have opened up wide, become an infinite conductor.