The Fate of the Tearling

  There was no way to measure time. They had taken her watch in the camp, and Kelsea was already finding out that the worst of a bad situation was the uncertainty of hours passing. Meals provided some respite—though not much, as they were usually cold vegetables, occasionally combined with some sort of meat that Kelsea could not identify. She forced it down all the same. Meals did not seem to conform to any set schedule, and it could be a long while before the next arrived. Water also came erratically; Kelsea had learned to ration her drinking bucket.

  She could see very little; the Mort did not allow prisoners so much as a candle. Some of these inmates were undoubtedly being kept alive against their will, for Kelsea had heard more than one voice down the hallway beg for death. She saw the logic behind the deprivation of light; the darkness was in itself a terrible thing. She had shown greater kindness to her own prisoners, even to Thorne.

  But thinking of Thorne was a mistake. By her best guess, Kelsea had been down here for four days, and she had discovered that a dungeon was of little use for anything but reflection. Over those last weeks in the Keep, watching the Mort draw closer, there had been no time for self-assessment, but here there was nothing else, and she thought often of Arlen Thorne, kneeling on the platform, his face twisted in agony. He had been a traitor and a trafficker, a brutal man who did not blanch at torture. He had presented a clear danger to the Tearling. And yet—

  “George, you must believe me!” the man down the hall shouted. “I did not take it!”

  Kelsea wondered why there was no one to quiet him. She rarely saw anyone here, only jailors and the servants who brought the food. They provided a brief moment of light with their torches, enough for Kelsea to have mapped out her cell, with its empty floor and two buckets. She had not seen her own jailor since her arrival, and was just as happy to have it so. The darkness, the monotony, the unscheduled nature of meals . . . these things were at least gloomily predictable, but the jailor was a pure variable, and Kelsea preferred the grim certainty of her solitude.

  It was cold down here, and dank—she had seen no moat around the Palais, but moisture was certainly leaking in from somewhere—but Kelsea was relatively fortunate. She had worn a warm dress for the early morning excursion across the bridge, and the heavy wool had taken minimal wear on the long road. She only felt the chill on rare occasions when wind moaned through the dungeons, a sure sign that there were either multiple entrances and exits or a failure in the structure somewhere. She spent much of her time near the bars, listening, trying to understand the spatial distances in this place. The Palais was not as tall as the Keep, but it covered an enormous acreage. She might be as far as half a mile from the outer walls.

  At this moment, Kelsea sat against the wall beside the bars, trying to judge whether she was really hearing a certain sound: scratching and scraping on the far side of the wall. Based on the dim, torchlit glimpses she’d gotten on her way in here, there was another barred cell over there. The Mort didn’t like to waste space, nor did they like to give prisoners the barest sliver of privacy. There was someone there, and that someone was scraping something against the wall, repeatedly and without pattern.

  Kelsea cleared her throat. She hadn’t had a drink in several hours, and her voice seemed to feel each syllable as its own special rasp.

  “Hello?” she called in Mort.

  The scraping stopped.

  “Is someone over there?”

  The scraping resumed, slower now. Kelsea felt that whoever was over there was doing it deliberately, to show her that he’d heard but simply wasn’t answering.

  “How long have you been in here?”

  The scraping continued, and Kelsea sighed. Some of these people had undoubtedly been imprisoned for years, long past the time when they would have retained any interest in the world outside their cells. But she could not shake her own sense of urgency. The Tearling was safe, she told herself, safe for the three years she had purchased, so what did it matter if she rotted in here? Vague thoughts of William Tear flitted through her head, images of his utopia, his Town, already beginning to rot from the inside. But that would happen whether Kelsea was locked up or not. The past in her head could be seen, but it could not be changed.

  Why not?

  Kelsea jumped, but before she could continue the thought, her ears caught a faraway sound: boot heels, more than one set, coming down the hallway on her right. As they came closer, the scratching sound against the wall ceased. The heels descended two small sets of steps—staircases, as yet unseen, at the far end of the corridor. Somehow, Kelsea knew they were coming for her, and she scrambled to her feet, so that when the torchlight came around the corner it found her standing proud and straight inside her cell.

  There were two of them. One was Kelsea’s jailor, his eyes as mindlessly jolly as before, holding a torch, and the other was a woman, well dressed in blue velvet. She was very tall of frame, with sharp eyes and the extra consideration of movement that told Kelsea she’d been trained somehow, perhaps in combat. Kelsea cast back and found a nugget of information told to her by Mace, long ago: the Red Queen’s pages had to know how to handle themselves.

  “She’s filthy,” the woman remarked in badly accented Mort. “Did you not wash her up?”

  The jailor shook his head, and Kelsea was pleased to see him looking slightly embarrassed.

  “When did she last eat?”

  “Yesterday, I think.”

  “You’re a joy to your profession, aren’t you?”

  The jailor gave her a befuddled look, and that was when Kelsea knew that it was all an act. There was something wrong with her jailor, deeply and fundamentally wrong, but he wasn’t stupid.

  “Give me that!” the woman snapped, grabbing the torch and holding it high, her narrowed eyes locked on Kelsea’s face. “This woman has been beaten.”

  The jailor shrugged, staring at the ground. “She was disorderly.”

  “This is a high-value prisoner. An underjailor does not lay fingers on her except to save her life. Do you understand?”

  The jailor nodded sullenly, a low gleam of anger in his eyes. But the anger itself did not frighten Kelsea nearly as much as how quickly he hid it, there and then gone, tucked neatly from sight.

  “Bind her hands and bring her up to the third floor,” the woman ordered.

  The jailor unlocked the cell, and Kelsea tensed as the woman disappeared around the corner.

  “Pretty is special,” the jailor muttered to himself. “But not special to them like she is to me. Pretty is mine.”

  Kelsea’s lip curled in disgust. It seemed the safest time to correct this particular misconception, since he could hardly beat her again without incurring the wrath of the woman in blue. She spoke carefully in Mort, enunciating every word.

  “I belong to no one but myself.”

  “No, no, they would not have locked pretty up if she wasn’t meant for me, all my own.”

  Kelsea resisted an overpowering urge to kick him in the kneecap. She had seen Mace demonstrate the maneuver, one of the most painful wounds an unarmed man could inflict: right on the dome of the knee, shattering the bones into so many fragments. Kelsea had no magic these days, only her own force to work with, but she thought she could do it, and hearing this man howl in agony suddenly seemed the loveliest idea in the world. But there would be nowhere to go afterward.

  “Hands,” the man demanded, putting the torch in its holder. Kelsea held them out and allowed him to place manacles around her wrists.

  “Pretty does not move quickly enough.”

  “Perhaps not,” Kelsea replied. “But before pretty leaves this dungeon, she is going to deal with you. Know that for a certainty.”

  The man looked up, startled. “Nonsense. She is only a prisoner.”

  “No. She is a queen.”

  “Yes.” The man finished locking her manacles and ran his palm over her hair. There were certainly worse places he could have chosen to touch, but the possessiveness in the gesture made
Kelsea’s skin crawl. “My very own queen.”

  She rolled her eyes, sickened. “Christ, let’s go.”

  “Women shouldn’t curse.”

  “Get fucked.”

  He blinked in surprise, but did not react, only took her arm and led her out of the dungeon. Kelsea would have given the world and all of its riches for her sapphires in that moment. Just the tiniest push with her mind, and the jailor would die screaming. She could make it last for days if she wanted to.

  Brutality, her mind whispered, and Arlen Thorne’s face flashed behind her eyes, there and then gone. You meant to leave all that behind, remember?

  She did remember; that moment in the Red Queen’s tent had put paid to all of Kelsea’s easy ideas about the use of violence. But hatred was stronger than memory, infinitely stronger, and in her hatred Kelsea felt an echo of the woman she had become in those last few weeks in the Keep: the Queen of Spades. Kelsea had meant to lay that woman to rest, but she did not rest easily.

  Beyond the corridor, they went up several flights of steps. It was a different route than Kelsea had taken coming into the dungeon, and at the top of the last flight she was disheartened to see a massive iron-barred door, two guards inside and two guards outside.

  So much for my ideas of escape, she thought grimly. A man could batter his brains out against those iron bars and get nowhere. She kept her eyes down as the inner guards unlocked the door. The jailor’s hand brushed her bottom, and she jumped. The longing for her sapphires felt like a physical thing, almost a fever.

  They emerged into a long, high hallway draped in red silk, the bright sheen of the fabric glowing in the light of many torches. The effect was beautiful, and Kelsea felt, again, the incongruity with the Red Queen, the witch-queen she had heard of throughout her childhood, the woman with no mercy, no heart.

  That’s not so, her mind whispered. She does have a heart, and it’s a complicated one. You know that.

  Kelsea knew. As the jailor led her up another flight of stairs, she wondered if the Red Queen had finally decided to kill her. Kelsea had spared the Red Queen’s life, but felt sure that this fact would not enter into consideration. The Red Queen would view Kelsea as a pure liability now, for she knew too many things that the woman had tried to bury. She knew the Red Queen’s name.

  I need to survive, Kelsea thought, else how will I ever get home? And beneath that, quieter but no less powerful: How will I ever hear the end of the story? The Red Queen wanted something, or she would never have carted Kelsea to this hellhole in the first place, and Kelsea felt her mind girding itself up, putting her bargaining face on. They had bargained once before, she and the Red Queen, and Kelsea had won, but only by luck. She did not underestimate the woman in red.

  At the top of the third flight of stairs, the Red Queen’s page waited. She waved the jailor away with a sweep of her hand.

  “I will take her from here.”

  The jailor frowned, the pout of a child denied a treat. “I should stay with her.”

  “You should do as you’re told.”

  His eyes burned, and Kelsea, who had briefly considered sticking her tongue out at him, thought better of it. She had no intention of putting up with the worst of the man’s abuses and delusions, but there was also no percentage in antagonizing him further.

  Just one moment, she thought, as the jailor—with poor grace—handed over the key to her manacles. One moment with my jewels and I could turn you inside out.

  “Come along,” the page told her. She had switched to Tear now, and her Tear was very good. “I have a bath for you, and some clean clothing.”

  Kelsea brightened at this prospect, increasing pace behind the woman until she was nearly jogging along. The jailor had at least left her boots to her, the good riding boots she had worn on that long-ago morning. They had stood her in good stead when she fled across the New London Bridge. Would Mace rebuild the bridge? There was very little money in the Treasury, and an enormous building project seemed like an extravagance.

  Look at you! her mind jeered. Trying to govern even from here!

  Taking a bath in front of the woman was difficult. Kelsea had long ago banished Andalie from her bath chamber, but at least Andalie was sometimes helpful, whereas this woman merely leaned against the wall, watching her without expression.

  “What is your rank?” Kelsea finally asked.

  “I am Her Majesty’s page.”

  So Kelsea had been right. But still, a Tear page! Kelsea herself had no real pages; Andalie covered the job well enough. But the Red Queen had a well-known disdain for all things Tear. This woman must be something special.

  “What is your name?”

  “Emily.”

  “How do you come to be here? Were you in the lottery?”

  “Wash your hair, please. We’ll check for nits when you get out.”

  Kelsea stared at her for another moment before dunking her head. Her hair, long and straight now, Lily’s hair, was a tangled mess lying halfway down her back. It took a long while to comb out, but to Kelsea’s relief, she had no lice. They gave her a black dress to wear, whether by design or accident Kelsea didn’t know, but she accepted the garment gratefully and found it made of comfortable, undoubtedly expensive wool.

  “Come,” the page told her. “The Queen waits.”

  Kelsea followed her down another long corridor, this one lined with dark fireplaces. There seemed to be guards everywhere, and while they wore the Queen’s red, they did not have the feel of close guards. Unlike Kelsea, the Red Queen did not have to barricade herself in a single wing of her palace with a handpicked group. What would it feel like, Kelsea wondered, to be that secure on the throne?

  They were headed for two black doors at the far end of the corridor, blocked by a man who clearly was a close guard. He seemed vaguely familiar, but there was something else: a sense of pride in his station, even though it merely consisted of standing there. For the men in the long hallway just past, guarding was merely a job, but not for this one. At a nod from the chamberlain, he knocked twice before opening the door.

  Kelsea had expected a throne room of some sort, but only a few steps in she realized that this was a private chamber. Everything was hung with crimson silk: walls, ceilings, even the enormous bed that dominated the room. The room also held a vast oakwood desk and a sofa upholstered in red velvet. Nothing here was gold, and that forced Kelsea into a reassessment of the Red Queen. Velvet and silk were luxuries, certainly, but the space was not gaudy or tasteless. It was a room that conveyed a forceful personality.

  “Kelsea Glynn.”

  The Red Queen stood in the far corner. Her dress matched the hangings so perfectly that Kelsea had missed her the first time around, but now she saw that the Red Queen was unwell. Her skin was pallid and waxy, as though with fever. Her eye sockets had the bruised look of someone who had not slept soundly in a long time.

  That makes two of us, Kelsea thought ruefully.

  “That will be all, Emily. Ghislaine, leave us.”

  Pen would have argued with Kelsea at this point—ah, but thinking of Pen was a mistake as well; the image of his stricken face on the New London Bridge would be with Kelsea all of her days—but the Red Queen’s close guard merely bowed and left the room. He was the man who had manacled her in the tent, Kelsea remembered suddenly. She had thought he meant to cut her throat, but he had merely clamped her in irons and taken her away. How could that day seem so long ago?

  “Sit,” the Red Queen commanded in Mort, indicating the crimson sofa. She might be ill, but her dark eyes remained as unperturbed as ever, a calm port in a raging storm. Kelsea admired that outward serenity, wished she knew how it was done. She was trying to hold on to her bargaining face, but it was difficult. Her sapphires were here somewhere, and though Kelsea had willingly given them away, the Queen of Spades wanted them back.

  She seated herself—a clumsy experience with bound wrists—and found that the sofa was the softest piece of furniture she had ever encoun
tered. She seemed to sink into the plush velvet. The Red Queen sat down in a nearby chair, staring at her for a long moment, until Kelsea was acutely uncomfortable.

  “You used to be a plain thing,” the Red Queen remarked, “when I saw you in dreams. But you are not so plain any longer, are you?”

  “You neither, Lady Crimson.”

  The Red Queen’s jaw firmed, a sign of irritation.

  “How are your accommodations?”

  “None too comfortable, but I’ve been in worse places.”

  “Really?”

  The Red Queen’s gaze sharpened, interested, and Kelsea reminded herself to watch her step. In the tent, the Red Queen had recognized her out of Lily’s portrait. She didn’t know Lily, but her fascination with the portrait, and with its subject, might be an important bargaining chip. But what was the bargain? What could Kelsea possibly offer that would make this woman set her free?

  “It was worse to be stuck in a doomed city with my hands tied.”

  “Your hands weren’t tied.”

  I didn’t know that, Kelsea almost answered, but then she thought of Mace, Mace who, when dealing with a known enemy, would have given nothing away. Thinking of him steadied her, allowed her to find her own authority. She would never see Mace again unless she got home.

  The Red Queen reached into the pocket of her dress and came out with both sapphires, dangling them from her fingers. “I wish to know what you’ve done to these jewels. Why won’t they work for me?”

  Kelsea stared at the two jewels, trying to understand her own feelings. She had been longing for them for days, thinking of the hell she could rain down if she only had them in her hands again. But now that she saw them, she felt nothing, just as she had felt nothing when she had taken them off. What did that mean?

  Seeing that she was not going to reply, the Red Queen shrugged. “No one understands them, the Tear jewels. Not even those who wear them. Elyssa never had the slightest idea. She merely thought them pretty pendants to wear around her neck, but she was attached to them as such. I could never get her to take them off, not even as the price of her kingdom.”