The Fate of the Tearling

  “We’ll find a key,” the Mace told them, but even Hall heard the unease in his voice. They had expected to fight their way through the dungeons, to break the Queen out or die trying; a grueling bit of combat, to be sure, but at least it would be a known hazard. They had been prepared to lose some of their number, but none of them had anticipated this. In one cell, a heavily pregnant woman begged them to let her out. Behind Hall, one of the Queen’s Guards uttered a low curse. All the combat in the world seemed preferable to Hall, and he was not alone. Several turns into the dungeon, Blaser silently began to retch.

  “How much farther?” the Mace asked Levieux.

  “Two turns right and down.”

  As they approached the second turn, all of them slowed, and Hall doubled his grip on his sword. A moment ago, he had been thinking that he would relish an open battle, but now his flesh had begun to crawl. Ahead of them, a staircase descended into darkness, and Hall could feel freezing air emanating from below. The blood trail led down the stairs.

  “Quietly,” Levieux cautioned them, and began to step silently down the staircase. They were forced to go single file now, and Hall took a position behind the great, bearlike form of one of Levieux’s men. The staircase wedged them tight, and for a moment Hall was beset by claustrophobia, with the walls closing in and people ahead and behind. The walls reverberated with the thud of many feet above as Levieux’s people tore the upper levels of the Palais apart.

  At the bottom of the stairwell, the line halted. The entire corridor was dark, but the stench of blood seemed to have deepened and refined down here, almost precipitant, a low, sickening throb of rusting copper each time Hall took a breath.

  “Torches up front,” the Mace murmured, and Coryn passed his torch forward. It was enough to illuminate the corridor, but Hall could not see past the shoulder of the enormous man in front of him.

  “What is that?” the Mace demanded.

  “Don’t move,” said Levieux, but Hall, able to bear the wait no longer, pushed his way around the giant until he could see as well.

  Far down at the end of the corridor, perhaps fifty feet away, lay a body in front of a cell. The cell door hung wide open. Hall could not identify the body, for there were two figures hunched over it, so small that at first he mistook them for vultures. But then one turned, and Hall saw that it was a child, a little boy.

  “Get back!” Levieux shouted. “Morgan, Howell, Lear, up here now!”

  But it was too tight in the corridor, Levieux’s men pushing up toward the front while the rest tried to shove their way back toward the stairs. The Mace did not retreat, and so neither did Hall, shoving his way forward until he stood beside the Captain.

  “What are they?” the Mace asked Levieux.

  “The plague on the new world.”

  “They’re only children!” Hall objected.

  “Keep thinking that, General, right up until they bleed you dry.” Levieux raised his sword, for now the little boy had clambered to his feet and begun moving forward.

  “Who is that?” Pen demanded, his voice rising. “Who’s dead down there?”

  “It’s her cell,” Levieux replied quietly. “Stay here.”

  He and his four men headed down the corridor, leaving the Mace and Hall standing there. Blaser had moved forward to stand at Hall’s shoulder, but the rest of the group still crouched near the stairwell.

  “The plague,” Hall repeated. “The attacks in the north?”

  The Mace didn’t answer, but Hall was already filling in the blanks for himself. He had heard of the destruction in the Reddick and northern Almont; had Hall still commanded an army, he might already have been sent to get the situation under control. As it was, the force that assailed the Tearling remained unchecked, moving steadily south. There were almost no survivors. The few rumors Hall had heard spoke of animals with incredible strength. But children?

  The little boy lunged forward, with a hiss that made Hall’s skin prickle, and knocked the Cadarese flying. The other child—a girl, Hall saw now—darted into the fray, wrapped herself around Levieux’s leg, and sunk her teeth into his thigh.

  “Five men might not be enough,” the Mace said, and ran forward, Hall and Blaser on his heels.

  “Stay back!” Levieux shouted. He yanked his leg free, cursing, and threw the girl toward the big man, Morgan, who held her struggling form long enough for Levieux to run her through with his sword. The girl shrieked, a sound like the peal of alarm bells.

  “Christ,” Blaser muttered. Hall turned to the Mace, to see if he would protest, but the Mace merely watched, stone-faced, as though well familiar with this sight.

  The boy had jumped on top of the Cadarese, Lear, and somehow pinned him down. Now Howell grabbed the child and ran him into the bars, hard enough that the boy fell, stunned. Howell grabbed one arm, Alain the other, and Lear straddled the child with a knife. Hall could watch no more; he turned away, closing his eyes when the boy began to scream.

  “Done,” Levieux said, an unknown amount of time later. “Come on.”

  The Mace moved down the corridor, his Guard surrounding him, and Hall followed. He felt as though he were in some sort of waking nightmare, and the scene that met him was more terrible still: the two children lay on the ground, bleeding, but further down the hall was another child, a girl whom Hall had not noticed before, with a dagger buried in her chest. Just in front of the open cell lay a fourth body, a woman, tall and blonde, and now Hall finally understood why the children had reminded him of vultures: the woman’s torso was pulped, her ribs poking cruelly through the leftover meat.

  “Kibby?” the Mace demanded.

  Kibb had already disappeared inside the Queen’s cell, and now his voice echoed from inside. “Nothing. No one here.”

  Hall barely heard this conversation. He had frozen in front of the adjacent cell.

  “No sign? No message?”

  “No. Pallet, candles, matches, two buckets. That’s all.”

  “Where is she?” Pen demanded.

  Hall raised his hand and waved it in front of the bars. The prisoner before him did not wave back. The man’s head was shaved and he could have done with a few good meals, but the face was Hall’s own, staring back at him.

  “Simon,” he murmured.

  “Neck’s broken.” Coryn’s voice came from far away; he was leaning over the blonde woman. “Clean death, before these things.”

  “Ah, damn,” the Mace muttered, kneeling beside the corpse. “She did her job.”

  Simon reached out through the bars, and Hall grasped his hand, resting his other palm on his brother’s cheek. Hall had not seen his twin in nearly twenty years, had worked all that time not to think about him at all. Yet here Simon was, solid and real.

  “But where’s the Queen?” Elston asked. In other circumstances, Hall might have laughed at the plaintive note in the big guard’s voice. Simon’s lips formed words, but nothing came out. Hall leaned toward the bars.

  “What?”

  “The Red Queen. She took her.”

  “What’s that you say?” The Mace shouldered Hall out of the way, but Hall clung to Simon’s hand as he skidded to one side.

  “The Queen hit her head on the bars. The Red Queen carried her away.”

  The Mace looked from Hall to Simon for a moment, then seemed to dismiss the resemblance as a problem for a later time.

  “Where did she take her?”

  Simon pointed in the opposite direction to that from which they had come.

  “How long ago?”

  “I don’t know. Many hours, I think. There’s no time here.”

  “FUCK!”

  Hall jumped. Pen stood with his back to them, his shoulders heaving.

  Hall turned back to Simon, noticing for the first time the cell walls behind him, covered with drawings and schematics. They used to sit for long hours, the two of them, designing contraptions, drawing the plans in the dirt with a stick. Engineers. Hall blinked tears from his eyes and, realizin
g that Simon was still locked in, began casting around for a key.

  “Where would she go?” Dyer asked Levieux.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Gin Reach.” The Mace’s voice was little more than a croak, and Hall saw, alarmed, that the man’s face had drained of all color. “She’s in Gin Reach. Andalie told us so, and I didn’t listen.”

  “None of us did,” Elston reminded him. He put a hand on the Mace’s shoulder, but the Mace shook him off, and suddenly Hall felt it coming, sensed that the boiling point inside the Captain had finally been reached. The Guard seemed to have the same idea, for they instinctively began to back away as a group, turning their heads. Hall turned back to Simon and kept his eyes resolutely on his brother’s face as it erupted behind him: a long, wordless howl of rage and grief.

  Chapter 10

  Gin Reach

  The malicious have a dark happiness.

  —Les Misérables, Victor Hugo (pre-Crossing Fr.)

  “My Palais is on fire.”

  Kelsea jerked awake from a doze that had been deepening toward sleep. They had been riding for nearly a day, and her head was beginning to ache again, sharp throbs of knifing pain that pulsed outward from the enormous knot at the back of her skull. She drew rein and found the Red Queen staring behind them.

  “Look.”

  Kelsea turned and found the silhouette of the Palais, jutting upward from the distant Demesne skyline. The upper windows belched fire, and the entire apex of the castle, including the balcony on which she and the Red Queen had stood on that long-ago day, was obscured by a dark nimbus of smoke.

  “The immortal do not flee,” the Red Queen murmured, words that sounded almost rote to Kelsea, as though the older woman had practiced them many times in her mind.

  They had escaped Demesne by means of an underground stable that, according to the Red Queen, had been prepared for her long ago by Ducarte. The stable was well stocked with clothing, water, cured food, and coin, but the Red Queen’s lost expression told Kelsea that she had never expected to need such a place and was astonished to find herself there. Kelsea was scarcely less astonished; the Red Queen, with an escape hatch? She wondered what would have happened if that knowledge had become public.

  The Red Queen had torn their clothing and ratted Kelsea’s hair into a nest. They hid the coins against their skin, and then the Red Queen dappled Kelsea’s face with blood from the gash at her wrist. Kelsea didn’t entirely understand the reason for these preparations until they emerged from the dim basement of an abandoned building, some distance from the Palais. They had been able to hear the roar of conflict from underground, but Kelsea was completely unprepared for what met her on the streets.

  Demesne was in chaos. Uncontrolled fires raged at several points on the city’s horizon. Mobs roamed free, shouting Levieux’s name. The district around the Palais, clearly one of the city’s wealthiest, was a battle zone of barricaded houses under assault by both citizens and Mort soldiers. They didn’t want to be discovered as wealthy on these streets, but Kelsea couldn’t seem to work up any fear, for it felt too extraordinary to be outside again. She had almost forgotten that there was anything but the fetid air of the dungeon, the dim light of torches. Even this wrecked city was a welcome landscape.

  At several points on their journey through the city, Kelsea briefly considered simply breaking cover and turning the Red Queen in, then presenting herself as a Tear slave. The streets were full of Tear voices, escaped slaves now turned rebels, and surely the Mort would not be interested in a lone Tear when they got hold of the noble to end all nobles. Surely Kelsea was justified in leaving the Red Queen behind. She had spared the Red Queen’s life, and the Red Queen had spared hers. There was no debt here. And the Tearling beckoned, distant but suddenly close. Once she got out of the city, she could ride straight west and cross the border in little more than a day.

  Home.

  Of course the idea was foolish. Demesne was a vast city, and Kelsea had no idea where she was. She was forced to trust the Red Queen’s navigation, and they had finally escaped Demesne by bribing five soldiers on the city’s south gate. Once out, they had ignored the Mort Road and begun a steady journey southwest. Kelsea had no idea where the Red Queen meant to go, but as long as they were heading toward the Tearling, she felt no need to deviate. She was surprised to feel an odd sense of responsibility for the Red Queen. The woman was all alone now, cast adrift in a country that screamed for her blood. If the Red Queen were caught, what the Mort would do to her would be bad, very bad, but what the Tear would do would be even worse. She could not go unpunished, Kelsea’s mind insisted, not forever. But Kelsea didn’t want to see her brutalized either.

  “The girl by my side,” the Red Queen continued now, her voice distant as she stared at the flaming ruin far behind them. “The girl by my side, and the man in grey behind.”

  “Are you casting a spell?” Kelsea asked. “Or talking nonsense?”

  The Red Queen turned to her, and Kelsea felt an involuntary shudder work its way up her spine. Whatever her relationship with Tear’s sapphire—and Kelsea had no idea precisely what that was—it still allowed her to see, to catalog and analyze the small tics that other people tried to keep hidden. Over the course of this day, she had become more and more certain that the Red Queen was only holding herself together by the barest margin. Un maniaque, Thorne had named her . . . and how would such a person really do under the pressures of blind flight? Beneath the Red Queen’s businesslike exterior, the exigencies of getting themselves out of Demesne, Kelsea sensed the first threads of madness.

  “I am not immortal,” said the Red Queen. The look she bent on Kelsea was a mixture of hatred and obsequiousness, and Kelsea was not sure which one made her more uncomfortable. “Are you happy, Glynn? You have brought me down.”

  “You brought yourself down!” Kelsea snapped. “All that power! You could have done anything with it, and look what you did.”

  “I did what I had to do to hold my throne.”

  “You’re a liar. I know about your court, Lady Crimson. I know how you conducted yourself. Slaves tortured and raped—and the men too; don’t think I haven’t heard about your predilections. People enter your laboratories and never come out. That’s not necessity. That’s carte blanche.”

  The Red Queen’s face darkened, and Kelsea felt something ruffle her hair, though the air was still.

  “Be careful,” she said softly. “You do not want to open this box.”

  The Red Queen stared at her for another long moment, then muttered a curse and turned back to the city.

  “We’ve gained enough distance, Lady Crimson. Why don’t we just go our separate ways?”

  “Well, you may if you like, Glynn,” the Red Queen replied. “But I would just as soon hold together until our paths diverge. Two women together are safer than one.”

  That was certainly true, but Kelsea sensed the falsity behind the statement. They were no ordinary women, and the man who tried to rob or assault either of them would certainly regret it. The Red Queen was afraid of something else. Finn’s children, perhaps? They had seen no more of the horrible things since leaving the Palais, but Kelsea could think of nothing else that would frighten this woman, save perhaps for Finn himself. They had stopped several hours ago to rest and take some food and water, but the older woman had forbidden Kelsea to light a fire.

  The Red Queen was rubbing her wrist again. In the stable, Kelsea had dressed the wound, washing it with water and wrapping a bandage. The two punctures were very deep, and they had already looked inflamed. Bite marks.

  “What?”

  The Red Queen had caught her staring. Kelsea turned away, looking across the landscape. They had finally left the broad, trimmed grass of the Champs Demesne behind. The ground beneath them had turned to high grassland, shot through with veins of silt. It was slightly better cover, but not the most comfortable place to spend the night.

  “We should keep moving,” Kelsea said. “Where is
it you mean to go in the end?”

  “To the Dry Lands. There is nowhere else I can hide.”

  “What about Cadare?”

  “I can’t go to Cadare,” the Red Queen replied flatly.

  “Well, I can stay with you until we cross the border. After that, I need to return to my city.”

  “That’s fine,” the Red Queen replied, her voice unconcerned, and again Kelsea had the strange sense that the woman didn’t care where they went, so long as they went together.

  What is she afraid of?

  They rode southwest for the next several hours. When the sun touched the horizon, they stopped to rest within sight of the border hills. This far south, the land was not covered with pines, only grass and shrubs and occasional greenery. Boring landscape, but still Kelsea stared at her surroundings, fascinated. Less than fifty miles to the north, Hall had made his stand, and Ducarte had forced the Tear army off the hillside by setting the forest on fire. Even Kelsea, who would have liked to see Ducarte in a Tear prison for the rest of his life, had to admire the simplicity of the strategy: if your opponent would not be moved, you simply burned him down.

  Dinner was another meal of cured meat and fruit. There was plenty of game around here, deer and rabbits, but the Red Queen had once again forbade Kelsea to light a fire.

  “Did you ever try to kill him?” Kelsea asked. “Row Finn?”

  “Yes. I failed. He’s not quite mortal. No shape; I couldn’t grab hold.”

  Kelsea didn’t perfectly understand the Red Queen’s words, but she thought she had some idea. When she killed Arlen Thorne, she had been able to see to the core of him: not solid, but solid enough, limned in poisonous light, and a younger and angrier Kelsea, desperate over all the things beyond her control, had had no trouble gaining hold.

  “Do you know how he became what he is?”