“I’ve heard many opinions of Queen Elyssa now, but I’m curious: what is yours?”
“That she should never have been given a kingdom to rule.”
“That much is obvious to everyone. But what was she like?”
“Shallow. Careless.”
The very words Kelsea would have chosen. She shrank into the cushions.
“Let me give you some free advice, Glynn. You are too invested. The tie of blood is only as strong as you want it to be. Some parents are poison, and it’s best to simply let them go.”
“Did you find it that easy?”
“Yes.” The Red Queen moved to sit at the far end of the sofa. “Heir and spare or no, my mother, like yours, should never have borne children. Realizing that, I left her behind and did not look back.”
She’s lying, Kelsea thought. She had seen into this woman’s mind, if only briefly, and the Beautiful Queen was littered all over the landscape.
“Who is your father?” the Red Queen asked. “I confess, I am curious to know.”
“So am I.”
“You do not know either?” The Red Queen shook her head, smirking. “Ah, Elyssa.”
“You won’t attack me by attacking my mother.”
“Who attacks her? I have a different man in my bed every night. We are not the Tear, to demand that women ignore all the pleasures of the world. But it was unlike Elyssa to keep secrets. And even more strange,” the Red Queen mused, holding up the sapphires, “that these did not tell you.”
Kelsea shrugged. “Perhaps not so odd. I’ve never had a burning need to know.”
“You do not care who your father is?”
“Why should I? He did not raise me, did not shape me. I had others for that.”
“But blood does tell, Glynn.” The Red Queen smiled sadly, and Kelsea was alarmed to find herself almost sorry for the woman. She would not delve further into the Red Queen’s memories, but she could not unstring the connections she had already made. The Beautiful Queen had traded away her daughter, as one would trade a steer at market, and that betrayal still loomed over the Red Queen’s mind, darkening it, scorching the earth beneath. “Blood raises us and shapes us in ways we don’t yet understand.”
“Ah, yes. I’ve heard that you call yourself a geneticist.”
“It is only a word. In truth, I know very little of genes themselves. We have not regained that technology, not yet. But traits, Glynn, traits . . . these I watch, and these I analyze. We are back at the level of Mendel, but still there is much to be learned and understood about behavior.”
“Mendel dealt in physical traits.”
“He was not ambitious enough. There are mental traits to be passed down as well.”
“This from the woman who tells me blood means nothing.”
The Red Queen smiled in acknowledgment, but the smile gave Kelsea no ease. What did the woman want from her?
“You said yourself that no one understands these jewels. What makes you think I do?”
“You must. They have been rendered lifeless. I’ve never heard of such a thing, but there it is. What have you done?”
“I don’t know,” Kelsea answered truthfully. “Why don’t you ask Row Finn?”
“Who is Row Finn?”
Kelsea narrowed her eyes. If the woman meant to play with her, she would not converse at all. But then, searching back through the memories she had glimpsed in the Red Queen’s mind, she realized that it was perfectly possible that the Red Queen had never known Row Finn’s real name. The two of them had a mutual history, clearly, and Kelsea had glimpsed something about a dead child . . . but it was already gone. Her foray into the woman’s mind had been too brief.
“Stop.”
The Red Queen grabbed her wrist.
“I know what you’re doing. It’s unfair.”
“Unfair? You’re holding me in a cell.”
“What you’re examining is not yours. You stole it. I did not look through the contents of your mind.”
“But you would if you could, Lady Crimson.”
“What difference does that make?”
The question startled Kelsea. She felt very sure that it did make a difference . . . but did it really? Mace would have said yes, but Kelsea was no longer sure. Just because she could, just because others would have done the same, did that actually make it right?
“I get a weekly report on the state of your kingdom,” the Red Queen continued, her voice laced with mockery. “Kelsea Glynn, a queen of great principle. Your government trumpets the value of privacy. Even your laughable new judiciary has decided cases on this basis. Privacy is privacy, Kelsea Glynn. Now, are you a queen of principle, or are you not?”
Kelsea grimaced, finding herself checked. There was hypocrisy in the Red Queen’s argument, but that did not change its underlying logic. She could not believe in privacy for some and invade it in others. After another moment’s pause, she dropped the fabric of the Red Queen’s memories, and they seemed to puddle, a shapeless mass at the foot of her mind, as when she stepped out of a dress.
The Red Queen nodded, a hint of triumph in her voice. “Principle weakens you, Glynn. It will always be used against you at the most inconvenient time.”
“Lack of principle is worse.”
“There is a middle ground.”
“That would be the Mort way, I suppose. All things inconvenient discarded.”
“What have you done to these sapphires? I demand to know.”
“What is the information worth to you?”
“Don’t test me, Glynn. You live only on my sufferance.”
She does want something, Kelsea realized, not just information but something else. The idea elated her, and she leaned back against the sofa, crossing her legs.
“You do not speak.”
“Why should I? I haven’t heard an offer.”
The Red Queen’s face twisted. She reminded Kelsea of a dog stuck in front of forbidden food.
“I could curl up and sleep in the hollows under your eyes, Lady Crimson. What ails you?”
“You are right,” the Red Queen admitted slowly. “I do not sleep well. I am beset by visions.”
“Of what?”
“The future, what else?”
The past, Kelsea nearly replied, but kept her mouth shut.
“A plague has descended on my land.”
Kelsea blinked. “Disease?”
“Not in the way you mean. This plague comes out of the Fairwitch.”
A cold hand seemed to steal inside Kelsea’s chest.
“In your Tear, he is called the Orphan. An ancient monster, filled with spite.” The Red Queen eyed her narrowly. “But I think you have seen him differently, Glynn. A young man, perhaps? A young man, handsome as the devil himself.”
Kelsea kept very still, for she did not trust the woman in front of her even an inch, but without volition, her mind moved backward, far back into the past, where a boy named Row Finn already felt slighted by William Tear’s town.
He’s always been here, Kelsea thought. Always here, waiting to wreck my kingdom, perhaps the whole new world. And I let him out.
“A horror moves across the north, sweeping my people south. Entire villages have disappeared.”
“What sort of horror?”
“Children,” the Red Queen replied, her face twisted with distaste and something else; guilt? “They’re moving from village to village, slaughtering the old, scavenging the young.”
Kelsea closed her eyes. In the moment she had forgiven Finn, she had felt the badness of the bargain, had known that she was once again being tricked by exigency into making a terrible decision. Behind her closed lids, she glimpsed the cages in front of the Keep, the special cages made for small children. The memory brought not comfort but a sense of great futility. Had she done anything of value since taking the throne? Anything that would mean something in the long run?
Ozymandias, king of kings, her mind whispered, the words not snide but plaintive, the t
one of a wind that scraped the landscape, sweeping all before it, leaving nothing behind. Carlin had made her memorize Shelley’s poem, and now she saw why, for certain.
“Why children?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Always, the man has wanted children. For years, I had to keep back a portion of the shipment for times when I needed his help.”
“What sort of help?”
“He knows things. Simply knows them. If I had a rebellion brewing somewhere, he knew, and I could act before conspiracy found its legs. If I needed to find someone, a fugitive, a traitor, he would know where. Except for you, Glynn. He has protected you all your life. He was happy to give information on other matters—for a price, always a price—but he would never give me anything about you, your location. Why do you think that is?”
Kelsea turned away, feeling sick again.
The badness of the bargain!
“Fire allows him to travel where I could not, but he no longer needs the fire. He comes, and the children come with him, moving from village to village, using my people as meat.”
The words seemed to stab a soft place behind Kelsea’s ribs, but she merely shrugged and asked, “What do I care? He told me his hatred lay here.”
“In Mortmesne?”
“With you, Lady Crimson. What do I care if he comes for you?”
“Don’t be a fool, girl. The damage these children inflict is not random. One village at a time, they tear apart. Houses wrecked, fields churned to mud, graves disinterred . . . they search for something.”
Disinterred graves . . . another echo of the Town. Kelsea was disquieted, if only because past and present were supposed to remain separate. Even Lily’s time, powerful though the vision had been, had always been distinct. What business did Tear’s people have in the current world?
She shook her head to clear it. “Search for what?”
“Who can say? But if they don’t find it in my kingdom, they will come for yours.”
“Finn can’t be so powerful as all that.”
“He can be, and you know it. This creature has survived for centuries on spite alone.”
“Well, what am I to do about him?”
“You idealists are all the same,” the Red Queen spat. “You assume that because you wish no harm, your decisions are always harmless. This thing was restrained, Glynn . . . bounded by magic so dark that even I could never discover its source. Now that spell is broken, the Orphan is free, and I know that you have done it. This plague is yours.”
Kelsea sensed her own temper stirring, roiling beneath the surface calm she projected, and she welcomed it as though it were an old friend at her door.
“You have a nerve, Lady Crimson. You wish to discuss responsibility? Let’s talk about yours. Thousands of people stolen from my kingdom, men and women and children, brought here to be worked and screwed until they dropped dead of abuse. And how many did you hand over to Finn yourself? You’ve been taking a disproportionate number of children since the shipment started, and I’ll wager my crown that’s where they’ve been going. If my hands are bloody, you’re swimming in it.”
“Will that allow you to sleep at night?”
Kelsea gritted her teeth. Arguing with this woman was maddening, for hypocrisy seemed to shame her not at all. “Perhaps not, but I don’t need fear to rule my own kingdom. I have no secret police, no Ducarte.”
“But you wish you did.”
“You think I’m jealous?” Kelsea asked incredulously. “Of you?”
“I have kept my people safe and fed and housed for more than a century. You can only dream of such an accomplishment. Instead, you’ve wrecked us all, without a second thought.”
“You don’t know me. I agonize over every decision I make.”
“No decision so damaging as this one. The dark thing—”
“His name is Row Finn. You really don’t know very much about him, do you?”
“Neither do you.”
“Oh, but I do,” Kelsea replied, seeing a sudden glimmer of a path. “I know more about him than you could imagine. He grew up in William Tear’s town. His mother was named Sarah. He was a gifted metalworker.”
“You’re lying.”
“I am not.”
“He would never tell you these things.”
“He didn’t.”
The Red Queen stared at her for a long moment. “What is your source?”
“You’re not the only one beset by visions.” Kelsea hesitated—it was second nature, by now, to deny the truth of her fugues—then continued. “I see the Landing, the time when New London was no more than a village on a hill, ruled by William Tear.”
“What use is a vision of the past?”
“That’s a fine question, but I see it all the same: fifteen years after the Landing, Tear’s town just beginning to rot from the inside.” As she said the words, Kelsea realized that history had failed them; always, in Carlin’s classroom, the fall of Tear’s utopia had been ascribed to the death of Jonathan Tear. But it had begun much earlier than that, all of humanity’s old vices creeping back in. Kelsea sensed them, even in Katie, who had been raised by one of Tear’s oldest and most trusted lieutenants. Even Katie had doubts.
Maybe we aren’t capable of being satisfied, Kelsea thought, and the idea seemed to open a chasm inside her. Maybe utopia is beyond us.
But no, she didn’t believe that.
“And the Orphan—Finn, as you say—he was there?” the Red Queen asked.
“Yes, little more than a child.”
“But vulnerable,” the Red Queen murmured, her eyes beginning to gleam. “Everything is vulnerable in infancy.”
“Perhaps. But I must live long enough to discover that vulnerability. My visions are not unified. They progress in time, sometimes by leaps and bounds. Like a story in chapters.”
“How strange,” the Red Queen mused, but then her gaze sharpened. “You still have these visions, even though I hold the Tear sapphires?”
“Yes.”
“How can that be?”
“I don’t know.”
“This Row Finn. Can he be killed?”
“I think so,” Kelsea answered truthfully, for she sensed that this was so. Young as she was, Katie’s sight was very clear. The boy, Finn, was undeniably arrogant, but there was fear there too, carefully hidden, driving him. But fear from what source?
“But you don’t know how to kill him.”
“My visions come unbidden. I don’t control them. You have to give me time.”
“Time, with this creature breathing down my neck?” The Red Queen turned away, but not before Kelsea had seen something extraordinary: the Red Queen’s knuckles locked together, so white that they seemed as though they might split and begin to bleed.
“What is it you’re afraid of?” Kelsea asked softly. She didn’t expect an answer, but the Red Queen surprised her, the words muffled as she spoke over her shoulder.
“You think I don’t care about my people, but I do, just as you care about yours. I have built this kingdom from nothing, from a disordered mess into a machine. I won’t have it torn down. I care about my people.”
Not as much as you care about yourself, Kelsea thought, but she kept the words locked behind her lips.
“I need time,” she repeated firmly. “Time to find out what he’s afraid of. And I want a different jailor.”
The Red Queen stared at her for a moment, her brow furrowed, then barked, “Emily!”
The page entered, bowing.
“Yes, Majesty?”
“Who is her jailor?”
“Strass, Majesty.”
“Strass? Why do I—”
“Three years ago, Majesty, there was an incident,” the page replied in her poor Mort. “I was not here, but heard it told of. A female prisoner.”
“Ahhh.” The Red Queen grimaced, gesturing toward Kelsea. “Did he do that to her face?”
“And elsewhere, Majesty.”
The Red Queen shook her head and t
urned back to Kelsea. “That should not have happened. I will give you another jailor, a woman with no such tendencies.”
“Why do you keep a jailor with such tendencies at all?”
The Red Queen waved Emily away, and waited until the doors closed to answer.
“Because he is good at his job. Prisoners do not escape.”
Kelsea thought of Ewen in the Keep, who had never let a prisoner escape either, who would hurt no one by his choosing. “That’s no excuse.”
“Who are you to judge? A mad dog captains your Guard.”
“Another word about Lazarus, and I help you with nothing, jailor or no.”
The Red Queen’s eyes lit with anger, and Kelsea realized how novel this must be for her, to seek aid. With her temperament, it must be nearly intolerable.
“If you want me to help you with Row Finn, then the exchange goes both ways. You must tell me what you know about him.”
The Red Queen nodded, and Kelsea was astonished to see that her hands were trembling.
I’m not the only one who fears the past, she thought. She has even more to regret than I do.
“And I want my sapphires back.”
“Not yet.”
“Why not? They’re of no use to you.”
“But of great use to you, Glynn. We must have some basis for trust first.”
Kelsea laughed. “There can be no trust, Lady Crimson, only mutual self-interest.”
The Red Queen frowned, and Kelsea had the odd feeling that the woman wanted to trust her. Clearly, she had missed much on her brief venture through the Red Queen’s mind. There were still many things here that she did not understand, but beneath the woman’s superficial poise, Kelsea sensed a desperate unhappiness.
Could she be lonely? Kelsea wondered, and then: Is that even possible?
The Red Queen held out a hand. Kelsea stared at the offering for a moment, feeling uneasy. If the recent past had made anything clear, it was her inability to recognize a bad bargain.
“Well?”
Instinct is your best adviser. Barty’s voice in her head, calm and undemanding, the very opposite of Carlin’s. Learn all the knowledge in the world, but your gut will always know best.
“Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair,” Kelsea murmured. She grasped the Red Queen’s hand and shook.